Hillary comes clean about Sir Edmund

Sir Edmund Hillary

Years after alternative media pointed out the virtual impossibility, Sen. Hillary Clinton finally has admitted she was not named for the famous conqueror of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary.

The New York Times, which repeated the claim as fact in a story just one week ago, reported Sen. Clinton's campaign issued a correction yesterday.

"It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add," said spokeswoman Jennifer Hanley.

For more than a decade, Sen. Clinton's informal biography repeated the story, and it was recounted in former President Bill Clinton's 2004 autobiography, "My Life."

The problem with the tale, however, is one of timing. Sir Edmund and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, became known to the world only in 1953, after becoming the first men to reach Everest's summit. Sen. Clinton was born in 1947.

Nevertheless, Clinton recounted to the press her meeting with Sir Edmund in 1995, during an Asian tour, in which she told the mountain climber how her mother had named her.

"It had two l's, which is how she thought she was supposed to spell Hillary," she said. "So when I was born, she called me Hillary, and she always told me it's because of Sir Edmund Hillary."

In 1947, Sir Edmund was an unknown beekeeper, but Clinton had explained her mother read about him in a publication while pregnant and liked the name.

The Oct. 10 Times story – about Sen. Clinton's mother moving in to the family's house in Washington – stated "her mother named her for the mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary."